storm ballad
by bluestreetlights
Summary: waking up lost in a new world after a painful end to their last, louise & hana try to find each other again. or: build a home out of promises and find family along the way. and always remember: threads of fate come in colors other than red. [oc-inserts, original crew]
1. in absentia

Absence is also a presence.

That is to say, the loss of something is always felt.

Even the slightest loss will mean something and a space will still be found hollow for a time no matter how short. An example: the perfect circle of dry pavement where a person once stood in the rain, watching the cars rush past - headlights burning bright lines through the darkness and throwing flickering shadows against crumbling walls and a broken bus stop - black eyes heavy with grief and exhaustion. Stray drops are already beginning to scatter across the ground.

This is what Hana thinks of as she moves from her spot by the bus stop, snapping her umbrella with a quick jerky movement and watching the rain darken the pavement. Cold water saturates her hair, turning what was once wild and lively into a mass of slick curls pressed flat against her skull. Rain slides down her back and she barely feels it, far beyond registering the shivers that wrack her body or the wet clothes stuck to her skin.

The flickering hum of dying neon lights from the corner shop nearby buzzes in her ears. Vague colors blur in corners of her vision. She holds herself very still and thinks of absence. In her head, Hana is counting.

Who would miss her? Who would come looking? Who would care enough to find out where she'd gone?

The numbers come up short. Simple. She's never thought herself good at them but counting is simple. Her math is sound. She counts again just to be sure. A rattling cough tears itself free of her throat in the next breath and she doubles over, struggling for breath through a succession of gasping coughs. Her throat burns. Her eyes are stinging fiercely.

Hana sucks in a deep rush of cold air through her nose and smothers her next cough. She shoves her glasses up and pushes the heels of her hands against her eyes desperately to stem the flood for just another moment. There is no one around but herself but she doesn't tolerate weakness. She can't let herself go. It's too late.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, once, twice. She pulls it out with shaking fingers and checks the caller. No one important. There's an old text message still marked unread and the sender's name worsens the lump in her throat. Hana blinks furiously.

Zero, she reminds herself once more. The number is zero. The number will always be zero now.

Collections will come for her apartment and her meager savings. Her plants will thrive on their own. Her absence will be felt for only a second, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in time with almost no one to witness it. No one to make a record of the girl haunting herself. She tips her head up towards the sky and takes as deep a breath as she is able to. The water has already soaked her through and all that's left to mark her passage in this lonely street is an old umbrella.

She turns her back on it and walks away.

Glass crunches sharply underneath her steel boots and each step is a fading signal.

In a minute, she'll stop walking.

In the next few, she'll be gone.

* * *

.

* * *

A girl blinks awake from a dream, thoughts hazy and scattered. She lies in grass that is vividly green, surrounded by a field of flowers swaying in an invisible breeze, sweet-scented and colorful. The sky above her is a perfect peerless blue and in the back of her head a husky voice murmurs an endearment to her, warmly teasing.

_Windows to the sky instead of the soul_.

Tears gather at the corners of her eyes, traveling down her face in heavy droplets and she blinks them away, unable to understand why her chest is suddenly seized with pain. The voice in her head is a memory, someone with dark eyes and steady hands.

Someone gone?

Her chest feels tight all of a sudden.

The ground sighs beneath her and the sky begins to rumble. Cracks form in the world around her, thin lines splintering outward faster than her eyes can follow. In a minute everything has shattered and she falls back into nothingness, the world above her fading away into pale light.

She tumbles head over heels in a constant never-ending fall until everything stutters to sudden halt. Something pushes her forward and she finds herself frozen in place, face to face with familiar dark eyes. Only now, they are shadowed. Tired and hurt. Her hands come up without her permission to frame a face she thought she'd left behind.

_Much too soon_, a voice whispers from all around them. The next breath sticks in her throat.

"What do you mean," she whispers back. Her voice wavers like dying candlelight. She knows. She knows what it means.

_She left_, the voice tells her. _She left to find herself a battle. She fought to the last._

"Of course she did," she sobs. "Of course. She never knew how to stop."

She pushes herself forward and presses her forehead to one that is startlingly warm, looks deep into eyes that blink slowly, unfocused as if trying to see something from a great distance.

"Will you let her rest, please? Will you take her somewhere kind? Somewhere safe?"

_No_, comes the answer, softly spoken and all the more devastating for it. _But_ _you may go together. _

At least they'll have that, she tries to tell herself. This time she'll hang on tighter, this time she won't leave early.

Dark eyes find their focus and meet her own for a single, startling moment. Something bright washes across her face as soon as she sees her, a sudden lightness, an ease that wipes away the harshness brought by pain and loss. For an instant she looks and sees someone years younger, a vivacious soul, her bedrock, steady hands and a hearthfire heart burning to the last.

Burnt out.

"Not this time," she promises. "I swear it."

An almost smile curls at the corners of her lips, wry and sweet. She speaks slow, like she's forgotten how the words used to fall from her lips. She probably has but her voice is still familiar, a low rasp with warmth curled around each word.

"Alright sunshine. Whatever you say."

…

* * *

a note: this story alternates povs (hana . lou / lou . hana) in its narrative. changes in narration are always noted but the narrator isn't announced. if it's ever confusing i can add names or signifiers for each person.


	2. the present a gift

In a small inlet lies an island surrounded on all sides by the deep blue sea. It's a small island, boasting a singular town and not much else. By all accounts, it's a town that has remained forgotten and unremarked upon by all those lucky (or unlucky) enough to have seen it.

The sun glints off blue tiled roofs, scattering their colors into glowing fragments of light reminiscent of an early sunset. The town is still full of life, lively and bustling this time of day as the fishermen call out their catches in friendly competition and marketgoers haggle over what new goods have been brought by visiting sailors and the few regular merchant ships.

Its not long before a door nearby slams open and a girl with blue eyes and gold-spun hair in mess of soft curls tumbles out and hits the ground running. Behind her a voice bellows loud enough to startle the birds into flight and alert the townspeople to the game afoot once more. Wide grins are exchanged, eyes rolled and shoulders knocked together as the townspeople wait and watch, talking loud enough to cover the amused laughter ringing out from some of them.

Their town's youngest and only troublemaker is on the run again.

This time she manages to trip only once and then haul herself up with great determination, flinging herself forward to avoid the sweeping arm of her guardian attempting to thwart her from boarding another ship.

Louise gets all the way to the docks and is just beginning to haul anchor when her uncle swoops in like a bird of prey and hauls her off a small sailboat in one hand. She shrieks in surprise and attempts to wiggle herself free as he marches back down the road.

"Hey! Hey c'mon let me go! I _had _it this time."

"Shehaha! Almost!" booms her uncle. "You _almost_ had it!"

"Yeah that's what I said!" Snagging a nearby merchant by the sleeve and holding fast, Louise tries to slip through her uncle's hold and ends up with only her top half free and the rest of her trapped by the waist in a barrel-hold under his arm. She looks up imploringly, channelling every bit of puppy-eyed innocence her body holds and pouts with everything she's got. "Tell him that's what I said!"

"Erm...er..what?"

She holds on tighter, pulling herself up closer to his face. The merchant shrinks backwards in a futile attempt at escaping the tiny child attached to his shirt. Her eyes are blue, wide and round and very intense. Frighteningly so.

"Tell my uncle -" she starts and is snatched back in a second.

"Hey!" she says.

"Oh thank goodness," he mutters.

"Hey!" she says again, louder this time.

Uncle Errel shakes her from side to side like a sack of potatoes in his version of scolding her for bad manners. "Leave the poor man alone, poppet. Look at him, he's shaking in his boots."

The merchant looks vaguely insulted but not enough to protest. Those eyes really are strange, he consoles himself with a sniff. No _normal _child has eyes like that.

Louise snorts out loud as if she'd heard him speak aloud (he hadn't) and stares straight into his eyes.

"I'm perfectly normal," she says primly. "Thank you very much."

The merchant pales and skitters backwards, smoothing out his shirt and throwing wild-eyed looks behind his shoulder as he beats a hasty retreat.

Louise curls into her uncle's arms with a discontent grumble, subsiding with ill grace. He pats her head with one huge hand, struggling to keep a straight face.

"Now then," he rumbles. "No need to be upset. How about some flowers?"

Louise perks up a little bit. Her uncle ambles forward, relaxed now that he wasn't running to chase her away from the ocean waters. They come to a halt in front of a very familiar stall and the wizened flower seller reaches out to ruffle her hair.

"Never you mind, sweetheart," she tells her, jutting out her chin to indicate the merchant now long gone and shaking her head. "Those ones will never understand." She gently presses a selection of flowers into Louise's palms and watches her light up. "Now how about these roses?"

Louise holds them carefully in her small hands and pulls them close. She breathes in the scent of wild roses and growing things, her smile growing wider every second.

"I love them!" she says with great energy. "They're so beautiful and they smell so nice!"

The roses find themselves all of a sudden arranged into a bouquet and tucked into Louise's arms in short order. The flower seller gives her a wink and shoos both her and her protesting uncle away, refusing to take payment.

"A gift for my favorite customer!" she crows and sends them packing.

Louise buries her face in the flowers, luxuriating in the feel of silky petals brushing against her face. Her uncle calls out boisterous greetings to the other townspeople who stop to talk to him or clap his shoulder in passing. She begins to accumulate flowers of different kinds, purple wisteria trailing behind her ears, daisy crowns over her hair, a sunflower in her front pocket, tulips slipped into the bouquet in her arms. She fairly glows with every new addition and the townspeople don't bother to hide their grins. Louise's love of flowers is well-known.

She doesn't know when it started, only that sometimes she thinks she might have been born with it in a past life.

The first time she saw a closed bud open slowly at the first touch of morning sunlight, something in her chest bloomed to life beside it. Something warm and gentle, a sort of acknowledgement. As if her heart had woken up and was saying '_hello. hello here you are again. i'm so happy to see you_.' That was the same day she began looking towards the ocean.

Something out there had begun calling to her, a call deep in her soul.

Louise sighs and holds the flowers closer. If only she could get on a ship and sail away. She could finally find out what it was she needed to find. But her uncle always tells her she's much too young to go away, never mind that she's so much faster and stronger now than when she first started running towards the ocean. And more than ten now! Surely old enough to be apprenticed to someone? So deep is she in her thoughts that Louise doesn't notice when her uncle sets her down at the front of their house.

Instead, she slips out of her shoes and stumbles through the threshold, moving on autopilot and trailing flower petals with every step. Uncle Errel watches on, amused and unworried as Louise finally shakes her head free of her thoughts to find herself standing at her own doorway. Her uncle kneels down to her height and brushes her hair away from her face.

"Deep thoughts today?" he asks.

"I want to go out to sea," says Louise.

"Not yet," comes the familiar reply. Her uncle's brows begin to furrow and he frowns to himself, noticing the way her face falls just a little bit.

She sighs, blowing her hair away from her face. "Then when?"

"When you're ready."

"I _am_ ready," she tells him urgently. "I learned all my sword lessons. I can hunt and gather food and fix my clothes and read my dreams right. I'm good at listening now. I worked really, really hard and I'm ready. I _promise_."

The last of the evening sun spills into the room, sinking light into the wooden floors. The curtains flutter in a quiet breeze and Louise's uncle watches her very quietly, solemn and serious. This moment feels different than all the other ones, charged with some strange energy. He looks sad and proud at the same time, though more the second than the first.

"Okay," he says and Louise freezes in place, barely daring to breathe. Her eyes grow wider and wider as he smiles, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "Okay, poppet. Give me a month."

"You'll - !"

Her uncle pushes up to his feet and plants his hands on his hips, mouth curving into a grin, clearly delighted with her excitement.

"I'll do it," he says, with the grand air of someone who's made a big decision. "I'll take you out to sea."

* * *

.

* * *

A child with dark eyes sits on a box of crates hidden in an alley and silently observes, legs swinging back and forth as she listens. It's nothing truly important, just the latest gossip between nobles, who's done what and gone where, and the current news which is all pirates.

Pirates have gone here and pirates have gone there and then the marines followed and there was a battle. That's the way it always is. Nowadays it's all pirates, say her parents almost every day at the dinner table, scornful and angry as they cut their food into pieces too tiny to taste. They talk often about the old days when nobles were more respected and the pirates stayed far, far away.

Hana listens like she always does, quieter than the grave, betraying nothing and offering less. But in the privacy of her own mind she thinks, _there's always been pirates_ and _people have always wanted to be free_. That's what she would want if she wanted anything. But Hana wants nothing.

She shakes her head and slides off her perch, slipping out of the alleyway unseen to rejoin her family in the noble markets. They don't notice her return, same as they didn't notice her departure, but she follows behind anyway, lifting up one arm to block away the dizzying scents of heavy perfume carried on the breeze. It's hot today. The sun is out and the sky is very, very blue.

Her many sisters coo over shiny trinkets she doesn't touch, big rubies shining deep red in the sunlight, diamond studded hair clips and bracelets inlaid with sapphires that burn purely blue. She watches that one for a moment longer than the others and something twists tightly together in her chest. She doesn't reach out to touch it, much less take it for her own. Hana wants nothing. Hana _can't _want anything, it's just the way she is. Like an old habit too deeply ingrained to be broken.

At home she trails up the large staircase alone, watching the swinging chandelier from the corner of her eyes. Below her a party is already beginning to take shape and soon the large mansion will be full of revelry and music, light catching on silver champagne bubbles, false laughter and lies spun sugar-sweet into every lilting word.

She won't attend unless forced and on the best days they forget to make her. Her family speaks where she can't hear them. She was just born strange her sisters titter with cold smiles hidden behind their delicate hands. Born wrong. Her eyes are much too dark and her teeth too sharp at the edges. Why she can't even fight correctly.

Hana always fights with her fists, silent in the face of shrill protests from her teachers and Mother's fury at her scarred knuckles. Bone splits under the force of her blows and sometimes she watches the way her skin knit itself together from split skin and purple black bruises back to an unmarred golden brown with the feeling of something heavy pushing down on her chest. An old familiar feeling of tired anger and a memory of red sliding down her fingers to pool in the dirt. _I couldn't do this before_.

"You had such beautiful hands," Mother bemoans, one evening. "So long and elegant. And now look how you've ruined them! Scars everywhere!"

Hana can hear the faint strings of music wafting through her open doorway as Mother directs maids to riffle through her closet in search of something suitable. She stands with shoulders straight and head unbowed and doesn't say anything. Mother sniffs haughtily. "At least you can't speak. I can't _imagine_ how much worse you would be if I had to hear you talk. You're enough trouble as a mute. You! Hand that here!"

A maid rushes forward to obey, dropping into a quick curtsey as she hands over a dress. Hana eyes its sickly bright colors and overjeweled surface with something approaching disgust. Mother thrusts the cloth into her arms and she lets it drop to the floor. A hush overtakes the room. Mother looms above her, eyes flashing dangerously and for a moment, Hana feels something other than the apathy that has clung to her like cold fog for nearly every second of her life.

It's anger, rising thick and hot from her chest. _I'm stronger than you_, she thinks. _I'm stronger now and I won't do this anymore_.

Mother sees the defiance in her eyes and rises to quash it, leans down close to hiss in her face, something ugly and venomous coating the words she speaks in a clear, beautiful voice.

"You _will_ wear what I've chosen, you _will_ come down with me and for once in your life you _will make yourself useful_."

Hana flinches away and watches victory enter Mother's eyes for a moment, as she leans back to straighten her skirts. The maids avert their eyes and busy their hands.

_My mom is dead_. I'm _dead_. _You're nothing but a paper cutout in the shape of a person_. Hana takes in measured breaths and swallows her anger in red-hot coals burning her throat. _I'm done here. If I stay longer I'll burn this place down and won't mourn a second._

The words don't reach her mouth but she presses her lips tight together anyways. Mother assumes she is holding tears at bay the way she used to as a child and laughs brightly.

"Oh dear." A light hand rests on her head for a moment in a mockery of comfort before she sweeps out of the room, taking the maids with her. "Get ready and wash your face. Look presentable. I'll be waiting."

The door snaps shut.

Hana balls her hands into fists and steps sharply over the crumpled dress. She ends up before the mirror. Her eyes are hot but dry, and as she breathes out her anger cools into something far more dangerous. She watches herself shift through the reflective glass, eyes turning flat and marble cold, face settling into the lines of someone much harsher and older than her two handfuls of years. It feels like she's done this before.

She turns away to find the bathroom, splashes her face with cool water and sighs. Her eyes close of their own volition as she blinks away the droplets of water that cling to her lashes, squinting as they catch the light and spin into hazy rainbows. The tightness in her chest begins to ease now that she's made her decision.

Hana returns to her room on light feet, her footsteps hushed and near silent. The door locks underneath her fingers with an imperceptible click and she sends it a look of icy loathing before turning her back. She pulls a pack from underneath her bed, light despite holding all her gathered possessions, mostly clothing bought on her own and bandages. Money makes up the rest. It's not like they'll ever miss it. They won't even miss her.

It's a relief to finally be gone and Hana knows she won't be coming back here. Not ever.

The high arched windows in her room lead out to the gardens and she throws herself down with calculated grace, landing neatly beside a bed of rosebushes. One of the roses stands out, soft blue in a sea of reds and purples. For the first time in a long while Hana lets herself reach for something she wants. The rose finds itself tucked over her ear, braided into her thick black hair so it won't fall off.

Thus adorned, Hana turns and walks away.

As she wriggles her way through the steel gates and keeps to one side of the brightly paved street, the sight of the mansion grows further and smaller behind her.

The alleys welcome her back into the shadows where she's always belonged.

…

* * *

a note: and there go the first two members of the ***** crew. name and crew positions are redacted for spoilers but feel free to guess at either.

my hope is that the first chapter gave a good idea of their differing personalities if not their motivations. this one i hope has showcased both.


End file.
